Late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel will air a rerun of an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on May 21 in honor of his fellow comedian Stephen Colbert’s final show.
ABC confirmed to Variety that Kimmel’s show on May 21 will air a rerun after airing new episodes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Kimmel, who has been subjected to recent calls to cancel his show, is not airing a new show on May 21 “out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff,” according to news site LateNighter.
The late-night host has done this before. In May 2015, Kimmel aired a rerun of an old episode in honor of David Letterman’s final show on CBS’s The Late Show.
The late-night hosts on rival networks have a history of banding together.
Kimmel will be a guest on Colbert’s show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, alongside other late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver.
The five men are reprising the “Strike Force Five,” a podcast the late-night hosts had throughout the Writers Guild, and The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television strikes in 2023.
The proceeds from the podcast went toward supporting those who were part of the strike as they went without pay during the protests.
Letterman, Colbert’s predecessor, will also appear on Colbert’s show during his final week on air.
Letterman hosted Late Night on NBC from 1982 to 1993 before moving to CBS to host The Late Show, which Colbert took over in 2015.
CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show in July 2025, citing it as a “financial decision” against a “challenging backdrop in late night.”
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Numerous media figures criticized the decision as censorship, as CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, was seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
But the media company pushed back on the accusations, reiterating it was “purely a financial decision.”